| Refinancing: Don't Waste Time Wondering, Just Do It
If you're not changing the term of your loan ... even dropping your rate by an eighth makes sense because you did not have to change anything to get a loan," says Bob Walters, chief economist for Quicken Loans. "It always pays to get a lower rate." Say the current balance of your 6.5%, 30-year fixed mortgage is $250,000 and you are making monthly payments of $1,580. If you refinance into a loan of the same size that's one percentage point lower, 5.5%, you've dropped your monthly payments by about $160 to $1,420. But let's say you want to take out extra cash to pay off $20,000 in credit card debt: You'll need a new loan of $270,000. And even with that higher amount, your monthly payments are still reduced about $50 from your current payments to $1,533 a month. To determine how your monthly mortgage payments will differ under a new loan, use a mortgage-refinance calculator to determine the savings you might receive.
NEIGHBORHOODS CRUMBLE IN WAVE OF FORECLOSURES
Manuel Juarez stood in the middle of his patch of green lawn and gestured at the dead, brown yards of the empty tract homes in all directions. "There are no people in that house there," he said, pointing at a large stucco home with a for-sale sign next door to his right. Then he pointed at two nearly identical houses for sale across the street, then to the one on his left and finally to the house directly behind his. "There are no people there, there or there either," the 51-year-old appliance repairman said in his native Spanish. Epidemic repossessions hit several ZIP codes >> The dead lawns and for-sale signs are stark evidence of the Bay Area's foreclosure crisis - and Antioch's Meadow Creek Estates, where Juarez's two-story home stands, is at the epicenter of it.
Boston nonprofit buys Greater Miami Neighborhoods' properties
Greater Miami Neighborhoods files Ch. 11 [South Florida] Commissioners seek crackdown on trailer park evictions [South Florida] Miami-Dade moves affordable housing loans [South Florida] Troubled affordable housing developer to transfer units [South Florida] .
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